Thursday, September 11, 2008

To the State of Confusion . . . er, Ohio

In less than a weak now, I will be moving to my new alma matter, the Ohio State University. It's odd that they start about a month after all other universities, but this have given me some time to do research that I could not possibly have the time for once graduate classes start. I have seen how absorbing of time they are for my girlfriend (whom I love). However, I won't mind joining a school with a winning football team!

I king of want to get started though. To get back into the swing of physics problems would be nice, especially if in my first semester I can do quantum theory. I'd rather do that over classical mechanics or electromagnetism. If you ever took grad-level physics, you know why this is what I desire. But, I have to get through it anyways.

I wonder how much CERN is going to be a part of my classes as well since they have begun accelerating particles there. As of now, first collisions are supposed to happen on Oct 21 of this year. However, it will be a long, long time before useful statistics are collected, and come Christmas Cern will be turned off for repairs. There won't be any discoveries of the Higg's boson by the end of this year then, at least not at CERN, and I doubt Fermilab will come from behind and demonstrate the existence of this last particle of the Standard Model. Yet, it is still more likely than CERN destroying the world--by the way, CERN cannot destroy the world even if the scientists tried.

As for CERN, my good friend has posted some answers to questions about the LHC at her blog. She was asked by the school newspaper to answer these questions and she made them more accessible this way. Good stuff, mein Schatz.